During Baldur’s Gate 3’s Act I, the player’s character will have the opportunity to collect their first Mind Flayer Parasite Specimen. Well, second if you count the one inside their own head. The player can use these parasites to unlock Illithid powers, abilities obtained by allowing the parasite to bore into the character’s brain.
Many Illithid Powers are extremely beneficial in combat, and offer unique abilities not found in a classes’ traditional arsenal. One such ability is Concentrated Blast, a potent Illithid power that can be unlocked in Tier 1 of the player’s tour of mental corruption. There are a total of 25 Illithid Powers that the player is able to learn, provided they locate enough parasites.
From the raw numbers perspective, there’s no doubt that this ability can be quite helpful in early battles especially at the low level it can potentially be obtained. However, the in-game tooltip for this ability can be a bit confusing to some players. To help players get the most of their decision to let the evil in, here’s how the Illithid Power Concentrated Blast works in Baldur’s Gate 3.
How to Learn Concentrated Blast
The Illithid Power Concentrated Blast can be learned once the player has obtained their first Mind Flayer Parasite Specimen and has chosen the “Illithid” dialog option in conversation three times, which triggers a special event while the player sleeps.
Mind Flayer Parasites can be obtained by discovering them while exploring, or by killing specific infected NPCs, many who are crucial players in BG3’s story, and collecting the parasite from their corpse.
The parasite is a consumable item that the character can use on themselves or any of their party members to unlock special powerful abilities via the Ilithid skill tree. To unlock Concentrated Blast, the player needs to simply open the Illithid Powers skill tree and drag the worm from its container onto the node for the ability.
Deciding to allow these parasites to strengthen your character does come at a cost, however. The party companions may have different opinions of the player character for choosing to embrace these technically evil Mindflayer powers. Additionally, allowing too many parasites to take up residency in the player’s noggin may incur more serious consequences. Players who have been paying attention to Baldur’s Gate 3’s story so far should have an idea of what will happen.
How to Cast Concentrated Blast
Concentrated Blast is an Illithid Power spell that can be learned at early levels, but can be tricky for some classes to use. The in-game tooltip for Concentrated Blast details the following spell functionality:
The confusing part comes in with the requirement that the player must be actively Concentrating on another spell in order to be able to cast Concentrated Blast. Every class has certain spells or abilities which require Concentration. To understand how to use Concentrated Blast, players need to understand Concentration spells and how they function in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Concentrated Blast requires an Action Point to use, meaning the player’s opportunity to use both a Concentration ability and Concentration Blast on the same turn may be limited depending on which spells or abilities are available to their character.
The Concentration effect will last as long as the corresponding spell’s tooltip states or until interrupted, so it is possible to cast the Concentration Blast on the character’s next turn if the Concentration effect from the spell cast on their previous turn is still active.
What is Concentration, and How Does it Work?
Concentration is a mechanic attached to certain spells and abilities. The way it works is that when the player casts the ability, they will be Concentrating on that ability for as long as its effect remains active. A character can be Concentrating on only one ability at any given time.
The player’s Concentration on an ability can be broken in battle if they take damage, or if they cast another Concentration ability. Casting another Concentration ability will cancel the effect of that first ability cast and end the Concentration state from that ability, replacing it with the effect of the new ability and entering Concentration for the new spell cast.
The player can avoid having their Concentration broken by doing their best to avoid taking damage while in battle. Every time a character who is Concentrating on a spell is attacked, they will have to roll a Concentration Saving Throw to ensure they are uninterrupted. If their Concentration is interrupted, the spell’s effect will end, and they will need to cast a new Concentration spell before they can cast Concentrated Blast.
It is possible to equip Bonus Action spells which will put the player into Concentration and do not consume the Action Point required to cast Concentrated Blast. However, these spells will still consume a Spell Slot, so the player will need to Rest to restore these (or via actions such as Arcane Recovery).
Wizards, for example, can learn the spell 
Expeditious Retreat, a level 1 Transmutation Spell which requires Bonus Action and a Level 1 Spell Slot, and causes the player to enter Concentration for one turn. Since this spell does not consume an Action Point, they can then cast Concentrated Blast since they are Concentrating on Expeditious Retreat and still have the Action Point available.
Methods such as this one can burn through the character's Spell Slots very fast, so the player may need to Long Rest more often than usual to recover. Still, though, casting Concentrated Blast every turn can be a huge help in taking out challenging enemies in early battles.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now for PC and PlayStation 5. A version for Xbox Series X/S is still in development.